She Produces Reds and Whites, and She Has Her Eyes on Roses

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — They are ethereal pursuits, creating wine and fast thoroughbreds. Both require vision. Both take time. Both are at the mercy of Mother Nature. When you get it right, the rewards are lofty — a wine that scores 100 points or a horse that wins the Kentucky Derby.

Barbara Banke entered each business with her husband, Jess Jackson, who died in 2011. Together, they saw 15 of the Jackson Family Wines score 100 and be deemed a classic. They did all right on the racetrack and in the sales ring, too, campaigning Curlin and the filly Rachel Alexandra to Horse of the Year titles and establishing Stonestreet Farms as a top producer of quality horses.

The Derby winners’ circle, however, has been more elusive. In fact, getting a horse in the race has been a chore. In 2007, Curlin was sent off as the second choice but found trouble from his inside post before recovering to finish third. He went on to win the Preakness Stakes and enough premier races to be recognized as the best racehorse in North America for that year and the next, 2008.

But the Derby is the Derby, and on Saturday, Banke hopes to top that achievement by meeting a colt named Carpe Diem after the race in the most coveted real estate in the sport, where she can hoist a trophy and he can be fitted with a blanket of roses.

They are going to need some luck; even though Carpe Diem has won four of his five races impressively, this is as deep a field as the Derby has seen in decades. It is topped by an undefeated colt, Dortmund, and another, American Pharoah, who has dazzled in winning his previous four races by a combined 22 lengths.

Luck and patience, of course, are staples of the wine business, too.

“You can believe that a piece of ground will be great for pinot noir, but it takes eight years to see it in the bottle,” Banke said. “We are farmers, which means we are dependent on the weather, but like with the horses, there is hope. Every year, there’s a new crop.”

Image

Carpe Diem is Banke's hope this year to bring a Kentucky Derby victory to Stonestreet Farms.CreditAndy Lyons/Getty Images

When Jackson died in 2011, many in the horse business wondered if Banke would turn her back on a sport that her husband had spent the better part of a decade upending.

Jackson was a showman with a righteous streak. He wrote oversize checks for first Curlin and then Rachel Alexandra, after they had shown their talent on the racetrack. He then set out imaginative campaigns for them, showing them off from Kentucky to New York and New Jersey to Dubai.

But Jackson also successfully lobbied for legislation here that helped clean up the back-room shenanigans of horse-trading, where what was called a “commission” often looked more like a bribe or a kickback. He filed a lawsuit laying out how he claimed to have been defrauded in horse sales, and he dragged in prominent breeders, including a former Kentucky governor, for uncomfortable depositions. There also were threats on his life, prompting increased security measures within and beyond horse country.

“Everybody in the business wondered what would happen to Stonestreet after Jess died,” said Elliott Walden, the president and chief executive of WinStar Farm, which co-owns Carpe Diem. “You want people like Barbara and Jess in the business. They put their money where their mouth is and support the good things going on.”

They need not have worried. Banke not only is as competitive as Jackson was, but she also has found true solace amid the foaling barns and pastures of Stonestreet Farms.

While Jackson Family Wines controls 38,000 acres of postcard-perfect land in Australia, Chile, France, Italy, South Africa and California, Banke prefers to spend her time on her horse farm in the heart of Lexington’s bluegrass country, which is home to 110 of the finest pedigreed broodmares and their foals that skitter through its pastures.

Image

Luck and patience are needed in the racing and wine businesses. Curlin, left, was a favorite in the 2007 Derby but had a rough trip and finished third. The colt went on to win Horse of the Year honors twice.CreditChris McGrath/Getty Images

“Barbara is passionate about the business of horse racing and loves every step in the process,” said John Moynihan, Stonestreet’s bloodstock agent. “If we have a mare foaling at 1 a.m. and another at 5 a.m., she is up watching both of them. She knows every horse she owns, and there are no shortcuts with her.”

Stonestreet-bred horses have earned more than $31 million in purses and included 24 graded stakes winners. Last year, they rang up more than $7.2 million at the yearling auction sales. Banke also owns all or percentages of 20 stallions, including Curlin.

Still, the horse business is not as profitable as the wine business. But it can be more heartbreaking.

Two years ago, Rachel Alexandra, the filly who captured the heart of casual fans by beating the boys, most memorably in the 2009 Preakness Stakes, was doing what she was meant to do after retiring: having babies and presumably passing on her speed and grit. Instead, after giving birth to an extra-large foal, Rachel Alexandra sustained damage to her colon that led to a stomach infection and six hours of life-or-death surgery.

Banke, a breast cancer survivor, had helped transform the filly into a fund-raiser for the disease, a symbol of female empowerment and an unlikely celebrity who once posed for Vogue magazine. The equine surgeons did not give Rachel Alexandra much of a chance to survive, but she recovered as Banke spent night after night in a chair outside her stall at Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington.

Rachel Alexandra’s breeding days are over, but she is perhaps the farm’s most beloved horse. “It was the worst winter I’ve ever had,” Banke said. “All because of bad luck on her last foaling.”

Image

Banke spent many nights outside the hospital room of Rachel Alexandra after the mare had life-or-death surgery. "It was the worst winter I’ve ever had," Banke said.CreditJonathan Palmer for The New York Times

With Carpe Diem, Banke is trying to weld her ambitions to common sense. The son of Giant Causeway was the standout in last year’s 2-year-old-in-training sale in Ocala, Fla., which meant he was going to be expensive.

She wanted the colt, but she needed a partner and knew through Moynihan that Walden and WinStar were willing to split the cost. Both were not only looking for a Derby winner, but a top stallion prospect. Carpe Diem’s pedigree and talent suggested he fit the bill.

“It was a no-brainer for us,” Walden said of WinStar, which won the 2010 Derby with Super Saver. “If we get lucky with him, we are partners with a farm that has a broodmare line second to none and can support him as a stallion.”

For Banke, half of the $1.6 million price Carpe Diem fetched was better than all of it.

“When you are buying into a 2-year-old, you know the prices are astronomical and that a lot of them don’t work out,” she said. “This way if it doesn’t work, you’re only half as unhappy.”

Whatever happens with Carpe Diem on Saturday and beyond, Banke promised to remain a horsewoman to continue her late husband’s push for reform. Jess Jackson was never embraced by the industry, but his widow has been. She sits on several boards and has been vocal about how drugs should be eliminated from racing, especially on race day.

For her, it is a bottom-line issue as well as a humane one. Like the wine business, the horse industry has become global. While Banke’s yearlings sell at the top of the market in America, they rarely hit that stratum at international sales.

“There’s the perception that the drugs impact the kind of horses we are breeding,” Banke said. “I should get better prices over there, and the rest of the world should know there are a lot of positive things going on over here.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B13 of the New York edition with the headline: Reds? Whites? She Can Almost Taste the Roses. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe